“We’ve covered everything except for the final question,” says Simin (Sheila Vand), “which is an unusual one, I’m afraid.” In Shirin Neshat’s 2021 satirical film Land of Dreams, Simin’s job as a “dreamcatcher” for the US Census Bureau is to go door-to-door asking that unusual final question: What was your last dream? And thus begins this satirical tale twisting the concept of the American Dream every which way possible until it has been wrung as dry as the film’s sense of humor.
Read MoreAcommodious floorplan imbues the organic forms in Faurschou New York’s latest show, “Embrace the World from Within” (from April 1 through September 17, 2023), with a sense of harmony and potential. The exhibition shows also the Yoko Ono’s work “Ex It”, a meditation on transience and traces titled “We’re All Water” (2006/2015). This work is composed of 118 palm-sized jars of water arranged side by side on a long white shelf. The jars are filled with water and labeled with names like Simone de Beauvoir (rendered in Chinese characters as 西蒙·德·波伏娃), Samuel Beckett (塞缪尔·贝克特), and Ono’s own (小野洋子).
Read More“Fragment of an Infinite Discourse” is the title of a work of art by Mexican conceptual artist Mario García Torres: three glass rings interlock without touching one another. The work serves as the exhibition’s opening gambit and visualizes its program. It illustrates how subtly yet inextricably things are interwoven and prompts a variety of associations, sensations, and interpretations. As a basic geometric shape, the ring manifestly instantiates the infinite form of the circle. Adopted as the title of the exhibition, then, “Fragment of an Infinite Discourse gestures” toward the plethora of conceptual positions on view, while also opening up manifold possibilities for interpretations and perspectives, through the work of other artists, including Rosemarie Trockel.
Read MoreTuesday morning last week, five strangers from across Europe gathered in a Westin Hotel conference room. None of us – the four GoCritic! workshop participants and me, their so-called mentor – had met before, and none of us, to our embarrassment, had much acquaintance with the work of multidisciplinary artist William Kentridge, Animafest Zagreb's chief honouree. In a spirit of trepidation and barely thawed unfamiliarity, then, we trooped along to watch the Kentridge retrospective that afternoon. Nine eccentric, intimidating and inspiring short films later, we emerged, and because I have a sadistic streak, the first exercise I set was for each of them to write a short review of the densely allusive, complex but immensely rewarding films they had just seen. They had 90 minutes.
Read MoreBy now, Seoul is quite familiar with the work of Kiki Smith. Her exhibition at Pace Gallery swiftly follows her presentation of over 140 works in the exhibition Kiki Smith - Free Fall (15 December 2022–12 March 2023) at the Seoul Museum of Art—her first solo exhibition at an institution in Asia. Downstairs, Pace Gallery is exhibiting the Cuban artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello in the exhibition Viaje en Espiral (2–24 June 2023). For his first solo show in Korea, the artist presents new paintings and works on paper that investigate Caribbean culture and history.
Read MoreThis is an exhibition of our time: Superman is thwarted and hits a wall, an oversized hybrid female hare offers motherly protection, a pair of seahorses switch traditional gender roles, and passion creates sparks. With a selection of contemporary works by thirty-one female artists of different generations and cultural influences, the exhibition at the Museum Frieder Burda presents exclusively female positions and their wide spectrum of themes.
Read MoreFor Graw, whose 2018 compilation of essays The Love of Painting was subtitled Genealogy of a Success Medium, painting is emblematic of this commodification but also a repository, for now, of potential ‘defence’: the artists she’s chosen, in theory, use the form in various critical manners. Rosemarie Trockel’s American Wall (2023) – a double, Gerhard Richter-ish photorealist portrait of a young Sigmar Polke (albeit painted by Chinese artisans) – meanwhile casts a wide ideational net. Its title refers, we’re told, to how Polke’s generation of German artists had to ‘break’ America to achieve market success; but the doubled image of the artist also suggests two-facedness, and it appears Trockel is alluding here to the increasing revisionist, post #MeToo view of Polke as what (fellow exhibitor) Jutta Koether has called a ‘bad dad’ who bullied others and mistreated women.
Read MoreNational touring exhibition William Kentridge - I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine will be travelling to the Central Coast’s Gosford Regional Gallery from 17 June to 27 August 2023. Central Coast Council Regional Gallery Director, Tim Braham said William Kentridge is one of the most powerful voices in art today, with this ambitious moving image installation now the most significant work by the artist in an Australian museum collection. “Emerging as an artist during the apartheid regime in South Africa and grounded in the violent absurdity of that period in his country’s history, William Kentridge’s artworks draw connections between art, ideology, history and memory,” Mr Braham said.
Read MoreBefore Tomorrow includes the presentation of several major installations and video works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection. [...] The evolving identity of the collection, and how it has been compiled since its founding in the late 1960s, was a catalyst for identifying two particular interpretative lenses that have been used to form this exhibition: the first lens is the notion of temporality. The fact that several works which were created and acquired earlier in the museum’s history, so clearly resonate with the aesthetic, social and political concerns of today, demonstrates how there is a timeless nerve in so many contemporary art works. This certainly rings true for Shirin Neshat’s Fervor from 2001, in which the artist responded to a shifting Iranian identity following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. As this seminal work is reinstalled today, it´s content challenges the perception of progress and asks important questions of our contemporary moment.
Read MoreFür die Gruppenausstellung „Assembly“ am Frankfurter Portikus hat das Kuratorinnen-Duo Liberty Adrien und Carina Bukuts gemeinsam mit fünf Künstlerinnen und Künstlern eine ganze Reihe Interventionen im urbanen Raum geschaffen. Die Spazierroute läuft durch den Stadtteil Sachsenhausen – sieben Orte ermöglichen Formen der Zusammenkunft („Assembly“) und reflektieren globalen und lokalen Austausch, außerhalb des rigiden White Cubes. Die Intervention „Lonesome George“ (2020) von Ayse Erkmen ist die minimalistische Bronzereproduktion eines Schneckenhauses: Im Grunde braucht es Koordinaten, um die Mikro-Skulptur unterhalb der Baumkrone einer riesigen Platane im historischen Metzlerpark zu entdecken.
Read MoreWhen viewers approach Shilpa Gupta's sculpture on the roof of the National Gallery Singapore, they'll see two large, black figures interlocked on a raised platform, like wrestlers in a ring. Closer inspection reveals that the intertwining bodies rest on a single head, sparking thoughts of internal struggles within a society or an individual's psyche. The work 'explores the complexities outside and inside of ourselves,' Gupta said in a statement.'I seek to create spaces that challenge preconceived notions and to initiate conversations across wider audiences', she said.
Read MoreThis spring, Christie’s hosted Say Her Name: Iranian Women Artists and Revolution. Convened by the renowned curator and scholar Layla S. Diba, the panel discussion at New York City’s Rockefeller Center featured four Iranian contemporary artists: Shirin Neshat, Soheila Sokhanvari, Shahrzad Changalvaee and Hadi Falapishi. They spoke about their work in relation to the national protests that have erupted in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who died in police custody after she was arrested and detained by Iran’s morality police.
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